The 22-year-old revealed some of her complicated feelings towards wanting and getting the surgery. In one of the tweets, Nef reflected, “i’m really happy i got my eve’s apple removed but it still makes me sad that i was never made to feel feminine-looking enough when i had it.”

Hari Nef: I feel like so much of mainstream feminism springs from the second wave, which was essentially a discourse spearheaded by white, cisgender, upper middle class women. I feel—especially as I’m trying to negotiate this new female space with the feminism that’s available to me—there are a lot of places where I’m disenfranchised. They’re like, “Oh, I don’t get these trans girls, they all want to look like Barbie. They want to get all kinds of surgeries, they want to wear all this makeup.”

Laverne Cox: You said that the choice to be femme is a choice of survival. But, you know, cisgender women are also struggling to survive in patriarchy.

Hari Nef: Absolutely. For me, as much as I want to topple the patriarchy, I still need to ride the subway. I still need to go to the grocery store. I still need to talk to people. I still need to go home to my family.

In a 2015 Vogue.com interview, Nef explained why she didn’t want to hide her transition, “I could have hid in Boston and lived at home for three years … gone through my transition, taken voice lessons to make my voice more feminine, gotten gender reassignment surgery, and spent time to complete my transition before I made my debut in fashion or film, but I didn’t want to wait!” She continued, “I wanted to be in the world. I’m not trying to self-aggrandize, but it’s more than a job to me. It is political.”